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The Public Broadcasting Of Tomorrow
by Drew Clark
Perpetually low on money, the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) has been looking for years to find some way to avoid the annual appropriations ritual of seeking funding for public television programs from a reluctant Congress.
"We want and need to do more ... to create viable alternatives to commercial fare, to ensure that one part of the public spectrum really belongs to the public," PBS President Pat Mitchell said. "It is the question of resource that puts boundaries on our aspiration and how much more we can do to ensure this democracy is well-served."
But the arrival of digital television and other digital technologies presents both promise and peril for public television's future, she and others in the field agree. Speaking Wednesday at the launch of an initiative designed to find new financial resources, including a potential trust fund, Mitchell said technologies like digital video recorders and mobile telecommunications services could render "appointment TV-viewing as antiquated as the telegraph."
On the other hand, the new intelligence law includes language stating Congress' view that the digital-television transition must be accomplished as soon as possible, perhaps as early as Dec. 31, 2006. Such a move would return 108 megahertz (MHz) of spectrum to the public for uses ranging from public-safety radios to cellular systems and high-speed Internet connections, and it would force all broadcasters to stop sending analog signals and to go completely digital.
Public Television In the Vanguard
The commercial television stations that comprise the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) have resisted a firm deadline for the digital transition. Those stations were responsible for scuttling language in the intelligence law to effectuate the transition by Dec. 31, 2008.
But almost all public broadcasting stations are sending digital signals, and the PBS stations have been among the most advanced in tapping into the promise of digital television. WETA-TV, a Washington-area PBS station, sends high-definition signals in prime time and also transmits multiple channels during the day, including an all-kids channel, an education channel and another stream with regular PBS programming.
John Lawson, president of the Association of Public Television Stations, said local public-television stations find the cost of transmitting both digital and analog signals to be too high. He has been floating a plan for local stations to halt their analog signals and return their portion of the spectrum -- about 28 percent -- used for those signals.
Lawson also spoke at the Wednesday event of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), but he said it is imperative that public broadcasters relinquish their spectrum voluntarily.
He said that by vacating their spectrum before a set date required of all broadcasters, public television stations would gain support for tapping the value of the spectrum to be used for creating a public-television trust fund. "It is the early return [of that spectrum] that gives us leverage," Lawson said.
Building Trust In The Digital Era
The idea for a trust fund was incorporated into a Senate bill, S. 1854, sponsored by Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn. Massachusetts Democrat Edward Markey advocates a similar idea.
Some observers also see support for the idea in a separate House proposal that calls for the FCC to auction federally controlled frequencies and reserve money from those auctions for government agencies that currently use the airwaves to move to new spectrum. Congress earlier this month cleared the latter plan as part of a larger telecom bill, H.R. 5419.
The Senate bill took inspiration from the Digital Promise Project, which is co-chaired by former FCC Chairman Newton Minnow and Lawrence Grossman, a former president of both PBS and NBC News. But unlike the enhanced funding that Mitchell and other PBS advocates are seeking, Digital Promise has determined that public television's support on Capitol Hill is too threadbare a framework on which to hang an entire trust fund.
"Four years ago, [the trust fund] was geared to public television," said Anne Murphy, project director of Digital Promise. "We went to everyone from [former Education Secretary] Bill Bennett to [Massachusetts Democratic Sen.] Ted Kennedy in the year 2000. To a person they said, 'That is not the answer.'"
Over the following four years, the project shifted its mission and message to creating a fund to help provide education in the most advanced digital technologies. The Senate bill would have taken 30 percent of the money earned from spectrum auctions and put it toward technology grants. The grants and contracts would have been used to help underwrite the digitizing of university collections and to make tech improvements within schools and nonprofit agencies.
Grossman, Minnow and Morgan see the call for a "digital opportunity trust" as something more like the National Science Foundation or the National Institutes of Health -- something designed to provide seed money for educational grants. They argue that just as the Northwest Ordinance allocated lands for primary and secondary schools, or as the rights-of-way during the railroad expansion of the 19th century fostered land-grant universities, Congress should dedicate a portion of the spectrum's value to educational purposes for the 21st century.
Conflict Of Visions
Grossman was in the AEI audience, but not on the dais, at the launch of the "enhanced funding initiative." Funded by a McArthur Foundation grant originally given to PBS, the initiative is seeking to corral all public broadcasting interests into one coalition to push for a trust fund -- presumably to benefit public television.
In addition to Mitchell and Lawson, Corporation for Public Broadcasting President Kathleen Cox and National Public Radio Executive Vice President Ken Stern also spoke at the event. The initiative is being chaired by former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt and Jim Barksdale, the former CEO of Netscape, and day-to-day operations are being handled by Michael Calabrese, vice president of the New America Foundation.
A task force is chartered with producing a report within 90 days. The short timeframe is because "there is a window of opportunity right now while these types of issues, including spectrum, are in play," said Jan McNamara, director of corporate communications for PBS.
But in a sign that funding may not be the only priority, Barksdale said the task force's first decision was to change the name from the enhanced funding initiative to the "digital future initiative." The effort, he said, "isn't about enhanced funding; it's about the digital future. Let's first talk about the future" before we consider funding, he said.
Barksdale, who is interested in early-childhood education initiatives and in PBS, said public broadcasting needs to consider future distribution technologies besides broadcasting, including the Internet and cable systems. "It isn't going to be long before commercial television is going to be in a crises mode because it is based upon a revenue stream that is going to be limited," he said, adding that public television may have other options but must implement a strategy soon.
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